Priyanka Chopra may be an internationally famous actress, but when she was younger she was not immune to insecurity, so much so that she once used a skin-lightening cream — but ultimately realized it was a mistake.

In an interview with Vogue India, the Quantico star admitted that before the age of 15, “I had a lot of self-esteem issues. I was very conscious of the colour of my skin. I was very conscious of being, like, a super-gawky, skinny teenager.”

As Chopra explains, when she was growing up in India she felt a lot of pressure to fit in, and thought she’d be more popular if she could make her “dusky” skin lighter.

“A lot of girls with a darker skin hear things like, ‘Oh, poor thing, she’s dark,’” she tells the magazine. “In India they advertise skin-lightening creams: ‘Your skin’s gonna get lighter in a week.’ I used it [when I was very young].”

As she grew older, Chopra says she had something of an epiphany involving her skin tone. “Then when I was an actor, around my early 20s, I did a commercial for a skin-lightening cream,” she adds. “I was playing that girl with insecurities. And when I saw it, I was like, ‘Oh s**t. What did I do?’ I started talking about being proud of the way I looked. I actually like my skin tone.”

Clearly, she made the right decision by keeping her skin tone au naturel; earlier this year, a BuzzNet poll voted Chopra to be the second-most beautiful woman in the world, following only Beyonce (whom, she shared in a tweet, is “her number 1 too!!”